Former Top Gear star Ben Collins has swapped mean for green – to compete in an eco-friendly racing series.

The 35-year-old stuntman – best known as The Stig – will be racing zero-emission electric vehicles in the new EV Cup.

Bristol-based Collins, a former member of the SAS, had spent the past seven years driving gas-guzzling supercars around Top Gear’s race track.

But he has decided to show you can have fun while being environmentally-friendly by racing electrically-powered Westfield iRacers round a series of tracks.

There are plans to race the 115mph electric cars in the UK, Portugal, Spain, and the United States with a city street race also expected to take place in the near future.

The EV Cup, which is the first competition of its type, will consist of
series of 20 to 30 minute eco-friendly races when it starts this summer.

Collins, who left the BBC show after revealing his identity, will be one of the series’ biggest draws after revealing his plans to compete.

The race driver said: ”Electric Vehicles represent a new dawn in motoring by running on clean energy that can be sourced as locally as organic sausages. It’s surprising that mankind has taken so long to embrace the technology.

”Motorsport still offers the purest research and development platform to deliver the true potential of electric power and dynamic energy recovery, perhaps to a level that will shame the carbon combustion engine the way rubber tyres did the wooden cartwheel.”

The EV Cup is also being backed by former F1 Champion Damon Hill, who believes racing electric cars will ”convince the wider public of their potential”.

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